Animals, Volume 7, Issue 12

As part of a larger Delphi survey project, equine professionals (n = 14) were presented with twelve short scenarios in which a horse’s welfare could be compromised. They were asked to rank each scenario (with 0 indicating no welfare concerns and 5 in...

Knowledge about slaughter of animals for human food is often perceived as controversial and therefore not made widely available. An open educational resource on the Internet about the slaughter of animals has created tension at launch but also resolv...

The commercial meat rabbit industry is without validated on-farm euthanasia methods, potentially resulting in inadequate euthanasia protocols. We evaluated blunt force trauma (BFT), a mechanical cervical dislocation device (MCD), and a non-penetratin...

This article presents a conceptual framework that aims to encourage consumer animal-friendly product choice by introducing positioning strategies for animal-friendly products. These strategies reinforce the animal welfare with different types of cons...

The phrase “essentially contested concept” (ECC) entered the academic literature in 1956 in an attempt to better characterize certain contentious concepts of political theory. Commonly identified examples of contested concepts are morality, religion,...

The assessment of plumage and integument condition in laying hens provides useful information about the occurrence of feather pecking and cannibalism. Although feather loss and skin injuries can result from mechanical abrasion or clinical diseases, t...

Welfare Quality^® proposes a system for aggregation according to which the total welfare score for a group of animals is a non-linear effect of the prevalence of welfare scores across the individuals within the group. Three assumptions serve to justif...

Fifteen New Zealand rabbits were randomly assigned to one of 3 dietary treatment groups of 5 animals each and fed pelleted, extruded, or muesli diets in a completely randomized design experiment. Rabbits were placed in individual cages with ad libitu...

National welfare indices of cattle and pigs are constructed in Denmark, and meat inspection data may be used to contribute to these. We select potentially welfare-relevant abattoir recordings and assess the sources of variation within these with a vi...

Maternal care has been shown to affect the development of the brain, behaviour, social skills and emotional systems of the young of many mammalian species including dogs. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of maternal care on t...

Many healthy adult cats are euthanised annually in shelters, and novel approaches are required to reduce euthanasia rates. Waiving adoption fees is one such approach. However, concerns that less responsible owners will be attracted to free events per...

In this review, the author discusses several of the weak spots in contemporary science, including scientific misconduct, the problems of post hoc hypothesizing (HARKing), outcome switching, theoretical bloopers in formulating research questions and h...

This experiment tested the effect of enrichment-block shape on oro-nasal contact by young pigs, and possible habituation to the blocks. Nineteen litters (197 piglets) were randomly allocated to one of three block-shape treatments: Cube, Brick, or Wed...

The primary aim of this study was to explore attitudes of urban Brazilian citizens about dairy production. A secondary aim was to determine their knowledge and attitudes about four potentially contentious routine dairy cattle management practices: ea...

It is widely recommended to group-house male laboratory mice because they are ‘social animals’, but male mice do not naturally share territories and aggression can be a serious welfare problem. Even without aggression, not all animals within a group...

Mammals’ mental homologies include that they look after their young, suckle and protect them; they acquire information about the world by learning. They have five types of sensory receptors and a brain to analyze the information and they feel: that i...